Published as part of an exhibition at the Haags Gemeentemuseum
16 May - 12 July 1970
Uitgegeven als onderdeel van een tentoonstelling in het Haags Gemeentemuseum

A practical guide to a journey on which Mark Boyle and his colleagues in
the Sensual Laboratory, Joan Hills, Des Bonner and Cameron Hills will make
multi sensual presentations of 1000 sites selected at random from the surface
of the earth.

In a condition of adamant doubt you are asked for explanations when all
you want is for someone to explain anything. And you are asked for purposes
when you are learning to accept that a purpose is not going to emerge
ever. And you are asked for a statement of intent when the head seethes
with all your fluctuating statements of the past instantly and meticulously
taken down and which you use constantly, with increasing derision, in
evidence against yourself. And you remember years ago deciding that art,
if the word had any meaning, should be waged like war and how, according
to all the strategists, you had to locate the enemy and evaluate your
own forces and assess the terrain and clarify your objectives and work
out your strategy and your tactics and, whatever you do, do not forget
your logistics, and how after months of thinking you succeeded with point
one and it's not the dealers or the critics or the intellectuals or the
government or the rich or the bourgeoisie or "them" and it's not even
like Father Xmas your father all the time but the only enemy is yourself
and maybe it doesn't matter too much whether you win or lose.

Everything you have undertaken has been so far from perfect, so seriously
marred, that to exhibit it with no matter how many disclaimers must remain
an unexpungeable arrogance. You don't even think that what you do is art
but just the most exciting thing you can manage and how inadequate in
a world of such magnificence and you remember visiting Christopher in
hospital after the accident and the old man opposite with the regularity
of a metronome sobbing, hour after hour, a little cry, every time he exhaled,
unintelligible, purity of style, like a hammer on the head, and the nurse
at last going over, and the old man says he was trying to go to sleep.
And you've made these pathetically inadequate studies in your own neighbourhood,
and the beach studies, and studies of natural phenomena and induced reaction
with earth, air, fire, and water, and presentations of insects, reptiles
and water creatures, and the physical nature of the human body and some
experiments in the area of the unconscious and you know that all of these,
however random, may be flawed by the influence of your ego and your upbringing.
And even the studies in your own neighbourhood selected with a dart in
the map are affected because you chose the district in the first place
and if you extend it to the whole of London you have to admit you chose
to live in an urban environment, and so you have no alternative but to
make your selections from the whole earth. And while you're at it you
are going to make films and you're going to make this film on evolution
which will include every living thing, and this film on the elements which
will include every known element, and performances of Requiem for an unknown
citizen which will star the entire human race in their conscious and unconscious
aspect and their physical and social condition. And you're going to do
this earth probe and you send hundreds of people a dart each so they can
take part and the GPO refused to deliver half the invitations because
the dart was a dangerous enclosures and they're going to be blindfold
throwing the darts at this huge map of the world and the surface of the
earth is 70% water someone said and supposing all the darts went into
the sea would that not make me look a complete fool and then the first
dart is being thrown and there are all these people waiting to come in
and the important thing is that no-one gets hurt with one of these bloody
darts and its Iceland and it's going to be alright.

And during the exhibition at the Institute of Contemporary Arts in London
you blindfold the public soon after they come in, and you put a gun in
their hands, and you lead them and you point the gun more or less in the
direction of the unknown target, and they fire this dart and take off
the blindfold, and they realize they've fired at this huge map of the
world, and you have quickly discovered that it's almost no good trying
to offer explanations, that the day of the explanation is over, and you
long ago discovered preaching is an ineffective moral gesture, before
you even got started on that career, and that if there's one thing you
can't possibly do it's to "tell it how it is" do you see what I mean,
that's my whole life finding out how it is and when you're telling, in
the end, you're telling how it is to be telling how it is, until feedback
sets in the form of a harsh scream.

And its not for want of acceptable explanations. There's a superabundance
of explanations and purposes to suit any inquisition, any situation. That
isn't the problem. The problem is to select from an almost infinite spectrum
of reasons why ....... and Christopher comes in and says "I can't understand
why you're so hung up with the idea of objectivity. Objectivity is motiveless
appraisal, and I can't see how any appraisal can be motiveless". And the
same day Dave Jeffries and Phillippa are round the house discussing the
light/sound machine(3). Dave says you can't measure any electronic circuit
with absolute accuracy because the application of the meter affects the
circuit and later that evening the police come round to collect Christopher
because he's supposed to be mad and he's just escaped from this asylum
they put him in two days ago, and Christopher jumps through the glass
of a third floor window at the back, and when you get round there, for
one marvellous moment, you think he's made it, and there's this image
of him vaulting over the wall in the moonlight, and then you see his feet
sticking up out of the area and while you're holding him and feeling the
warm blood soaking your clothes, and you're crying and loving him, and
sure he's dying, and your thighs are all sticky with his blood, and he
comes round for a moment and starts to apologise for breaking the window,
and says he just wanted to be free. And you can't even begin to explain
to him or yourself, and you weren't even able to explain adequately to
the judge that sent him there in the first place, why he should be free,
and why he didn't want to have them with their drugs and their electric
shock treatment buggering around with his ideas even if they are hallucinations,
and whose to say, and anyway maybe London needs people acting strange
and going about with weird ideas - a very gentle man. And he thinks he's
an angel, and you come away from the Chelsea v. Arsenal game with him
and Sebastian and all three of you howling with laughter at the idea of
Michael the Archangel being a Chelsea supporter and so what? I know someone
who thinks he's the Archbishop of bloody Canterbury, and someone else
who thinks he's Mark Boyle, and Des Bonner says "who do we think we are?"
........

And Miriam brought David Berkley round from Bell Laboratories in the
States, and David spends some hours examining one of the beach studies
through a microscope, and then suggests I should give up the whole art
bit and do the Journey to the Surface of the Earth as a scientific project,
and suggests I should write up the tidal series for one of the geophysical
magazines, with a page of high contrast photos to show the gross form,
and some micro photos to show the individual grains of quartz and salt.
And Cameron takes the high contrast scientific shots and this dealer sees
them and says the photos aren't any use because they're too painterly.
And they're both right, and everyone is right, even the ones that are
wrong are right. Did you see that interview of Jung on TV when John Freeman
asked if he believed in God, and the old man says "I believe in the belief
in God".

And how can you offer explanations? You can say "I've tried to make my
work as objective as possible, as far as I can be sure there's nothing
of me in there," but you must always have the suspicion that although
each individual work is entirely random, the whole project, and the desire
and determination to do it, are deeply subjective and David Berkley says
that in the final analysis he, as a scientist, has the same problem.

'And in the midst of all this questioning there are these people analysing,
parsing and explaining what you're on about, and believe me, they are
dear, kind sincere people whether they're for or against you, and you
divide them up into those who are seriously trying to discover about themselves
and their role and the world and those who are concerned with their posture
and whether they can be seen to be liking or disliking the right scenes,
and you think about Mike Ratledge and Robert and Kevin and Hugh and working
with the Soft Machine and their shattering, acetylene music and how can
anyone hear it live and then ask for explanations. How could anyone go
to Beethoven and say "Why?" How can you go to a girl with her baby and
say "Why?" But they do. And there is an answer. There are a million answers.
The answers are all around you. The head is drenched with thoughts and
images(4) that supercede one another with such rapidity that writing and
even speaking become intolerable except as a sort of recreational activity,
or as a social constitutional of a kind that appals you more and more.

You don't want any image, you want to be transparent, a projection almost
seen on a cloud of cigarette smoke. And you know as you say it that all
you're doing is to make another kind of image, perhaps more suited to
your circumstances than any other. You're saying I am what I produce,
I am a circuit of no importance. My anonymity is valuable to me.

You would like to have a bitter image of yourself. But you're not even
bitter any longer. You have no ambitions. You've seen it all and you knew
before you saw it that their Hilton Hotels and their Cadillacs were going
to add up to precisely nothing. You're an onion, and to find the inner,
essential onion you strip away the layers protecting the centre, to discover
that at the centre there are only more layers and beyond them a smell
and a blur of tears.

You remember fragments of 50,000 experiences, and you suspect them, and
you suspect the conscious and unconscious forces that keep dredging them
up. They're all part of the proper snobberies, the prejudices and preferences(5)
built in by your heredity and your upbringing. Most of all you suspect
the way you formulate. And so finally you say there is this, there is
this, there is this. As far as I can be sure there is nothing of me in
there. They present as accurately and objectively as I can manage certain
sites randomly selected, isolated at one moment. The next moment the sites
are different. In half an hour they are transformed. And you have the
situation as it was at that instant, perhaps already partially invalidated
by its permanence and its isolation; and you film it so you can also study
the movement across the site and the way it changes and you go back weeks
later to photograph the changes and you get attacked by this big spotty
dog and then it pisses on the edge of the site and you and the dog move
off in your separate directions, relieved, and you get home and you develop
the film and beyond the site, and beyond the dog pissing on the edge of
it, you see this sign saying "where really good signs are made'.

And the question arises 'to what extent is it necessary to isolate in
order to examine'. I've isolated fragments, the organic and the inorganic,
the natural phenomenon and the induced reaction, the human and the elemental.
I've tried to integrate in order to examine. If you study how it is somewhere,
sometime, maybe you are better able to begin to know how it is, anywhere,
anytime. Maybe it's only by way of isolating anything that you can begin
to cope with the concept of isolating everything.

And in the end all you can say is, "I know what I'm on about, and Joan
knows what she's on about, and Johnny and Des know what they're on about,
and everyone to some extent knows what they're on about and we're going
to do this Journey, making multi sensual presentations of 1000 random
sites across the surface of the earth and we'll put the actual description
of what we're going to do on each site at the end of this bit and it doesn't
matter if nobody reads the book because I don't know why the things I'm
on about should interest anyone else.

And maybe my telegram was right and there is a multi cellular animal
called humanity and maybe Johnny is right when he says we're developing
a nervous system (6) for it and maybe we need to develop an efficient
digestive system for it, and a circulatory system and a skeletal system,
and an excretory system so that when some atrocity happens or when anyone
anywhere gets hurt we immediately feel the pain of it. So that we can
handle the food and distribute it, not just adequately, but equally, to
each cell. So that we can handle our effluent without polluting the whole
place. Maybe we should recognize the animal and recognize that the evolution
of this animal could be the purpose that has to be discovered. Maybe we
have to accelerate evolution. Maybe everyone has to learn to accept only
the distortion of their own senses, so that humanity can adapt and survive
because each one of us is able to offer, as far as possible, objective
information to the racial conscious. Maybe we also need to supply the
racial unconscious with an adequate dream.(7)

MANUAL FOR THE JOURNEY

The objective of this Journey will be to make multi-sensual presentations
of 1000 sites selected at random from the surface of the earth. Between
August 1968 and July 1969 blindfolded members of the public selected these
sites, initially by throwing darts and eventually by shooting them into
what turned out to be an enormous map of the world. However big the map,
the dart point inevitably covered a considerable area and so could only
be an approximation of the site. A larger scale map of the area covered
by the dart point is then obtained and a further dart is fired to select
the actual spot. Perhaps if large scale maps of the area are not available
it will be necessary to draw one. On arrival at the actual spot an area
6 feet square is selected at random. The method of selecting the actual
square varies, depending on the terrain (e.g. on a flat treeless piece
of ground a right angled piece of metal thrown into the air will determine
one corner when it lands, and the lines can be produced to form two sides
of the 6 ft. square. Vertical or suspended elements on the site must be
included in the total area from which the selection of the final square
is made). Everything else about the Journey must depend to some extent
on what is possible in the realm of equipment, materials, transport etc.
etc. And the size of the finished work, though as near as possible to
6 feet square, must depend on the difficulty of the terrain it has to
be transported through. But nothing must be allowed to affect the random
selection procedure. It may well be that on the site, geographical or
botanical or animal features will pose conceptual problems. These must
all be dealt with in a random manner that removes the possibility of personal
subjective selection of the site. The arrows on the detail maps in this
atlas give only a rough approximation. In every case a further dart will
be thrown at a large scale map of the district to select the actual spot.

Once the actual random square has been selected a multi sensual presentation
of the site will be made. This will be done in the medium most suited
to the problems posed by the individual site. But usually the multi sensual
presentation of each 6 ft. square site will include most of the following
studies.

Mineral

Solids (8)

1. Take the actual surface coating of earth, dust, sand, mud, stone, pebbles,
snow, moss, grass or whatever hold it in the shape it was in on the site.
Fix it. Make it permanent.

2. Take an earth core showing the composition of the earth from the surface
to a depth of 6 feet.

3. Make a study of the effect of elemental forces working on the site. (9)

4. Make a film involving a 360¡ pan from the centre of the site.

5. From the centre of the site, setting the angle, lens, direction and motor
speed of the camera at random, make a film for a random duration (e.g. select
randomly a length between one frame and 100 feet of film).

Liquids (10)

1. Make a surface study with film or by casting the surface.

2. Make a hologram of the water.

3. Take water samples at various depths.

4. Make an underwater film of coloured dyes in the water to show turbulence.

5. Perhaps take the surface coating of the sea bed as in solids 1.

Gases

1. Film sky from the centre of the square 24 hours at 1 frame per 30 seconds,
so that in 2 minutes the cloud formations of that whole day can be seen.

2. Make a turbulence study by, for example, filming the result of releasing
variously coloured smoke at each corner of the site.

General

Assemble a film on all the elements.

Vegetable (11)

1. In the surface presentation preserve all the plants so that their actual
colour, shape, texture etc. are fixed permanently.

2. Collect seeds on site.

3. Plant random gardens.

General

Make a film on all classes of botanical life.

Animal

1. In the surface presentation preserve all traces of animal life. (12)

2. Film animal movement on the site, in the air above, in the sea, on or
in the earth.

General

Make a film on all classes of animal life.

Human

Perform random check on physical responses of Mark Boyle and Joan Hills
to each site. (13)

Study with film and tape the nearest inhabited spot to the site. (14) Treat
this community (e.g. Family, village, or city) as a biological entity. (15)
Examine the animal biologically (i.e. its skeletal system, its nervous system,
its digestive system, its circulatory system, its reproductive system, its
excretory system, its intelligence, and its unconscious.) This material
will form the basis for the performances of REQUIEM FOR AN UNKNOWN CITIZEN.
(16)